Regulators ordered five big US banks to make significant revisions to their so-called living wills by October 1 or face potential regulatory sanctions, a stern warning that will fuel criticism the firms are “too big to fail”.

JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, and State Street were told by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp that the regulators felt their plans for a possible bankruptcy do not meet the legal standard laid out in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which requires that firms have credible plans to go through bankruptcy at no cost to taxpayers